Culture, Religion, History and News

Archive for March, 2001

Mountainous Afghanistan has been a cross roads of Indo-Eurasian trade and conquest since antiquity. Around 1500 BC Vedic Aryans, initiators of Brahmanism, ruled the Northern Afghanistan. They were settled in fertile plains of Bactria (Balkh). These Aryans were subjugated by King Darius I of Persia who invaded Afghan area in 522 BC. In 330 BC Alexander the Great of Mecedonia vanquished Achaemenid emporer, Darius III in Mesopotamia, marched his troops into Herat, Kandahar, Panjshair, Bactria (Balkh), crossed Hindu Kush into Punjab (Pakistan) and Sindh (Pakistan). After Alexander’s death, Afghanistan was divided between Greeks and Mouryans. Famous among Mouryans was King Ashoka (268-233 BC). Rock inscriptions of King Ashoka were found in both Greek and Aramaic languages in Laghman and Kandahar. The Ashokan edicts encouraged piety and compassion towards humans and animals.

The great Kushan King, Kanishka (130 AD), who originated from the Nomadic tribes of Central Asia that invaded Bactria, established an empire, which extended from Gobi desert to Ganges Valley. He promoted the richest trade of luxury goods ever in the world. Wines, ceramics and glass were shipped from imperial Rome and Alexandria, silks from China, spices and gems from South India. King Kanishka called a council of Buddhist scholars in Kashmir, which decided to humanize Buddhism in order to gain popularity over Brahmanism. This new school of Mahayana Buddhism placed more emphasis on the miraculous life and compassionate personality of Lord Buddha. It promised all worshippers universal salvation with the help of enlightened individuals called Bodhisatvas. This directly resulted in the artistic representation of the Buddha in human form for the first time. Buddhist art flourished under the Kushans and Buddhism swept across the Silk Route into China, Tibet and Far East. Except in far western parts, Buddhist sites are plentiful in Afghanistan. Stupas, the hemispherical domes, are the main attraction of these sites. The most famous of all Buddhist sites is Bamiyan. It has two colossal Buddha statues carved out of rockface about 1600 years ago. The large Buddha is about 180 ft and is the largest statue of its kind in the world.
For several centuries Brahmanism, Buddhism and other Hinduisms flourished side by side in Afghanistan. However, starting in the 7th century, Islamic incursions from Arabs of Central Asia changed the dynamics. By the 9th century Bactria (Balkh) became Islamic center under the Samanid dynasty. Under Sultan Mahmud, who ruled Afghanistan and Western Persia, the city of Ghazni came into prominence. He looted the Northern India and adorned his palaces with the booty. In the 12th Century Alauddin from Ghori overwhelmed the Gaznavid dynasty and took over. Alauddin was famously known as the ‘World Burner,” as he burned the fabulous cities of Ghazni and Bost of Ghazni dynasty and built a capitol at Ferozkoh. In 13th century Genghis Khan invaded Afghanistan and utterly devastated every town and murdered every living thing. In the 14th Century Taimur from Samarkhand conquered Balkh and Herat and proclaimed himself to be the emperor from Kabul to Samarkhand. In 1504, Uzbek warrior, Babur, conquered Kabul. He took Herat and Kandhahar in 1507 and then proceeded to Delhi and Agra to found the Moghul Empire in 1525. After Babur’s death in 1530, Afghanistan was divided between two great empires: Mogul Empire of Delhi controlled Kabul and Kandhahar, while Persian Empire controlled Herat. In 1738, a Turkoman warrior took throne of Persia with a title “Nadir Shah.” He ended Mogul empire by taking over Afghanistan and ravaging Delhi. On his return from Delhi in 1747, he was poisoned and his bodyguard assumed the control of Kandhahar as “Ahmed Shah Durrani,” and created an Afghan Empire by capturing Kabul, Herat, Badakshan, Kashmir, Sindh, and Punjab. He became known as the Father of Afghanistan (Ahmed Shah Baba). In the 19th Century Great Britain and Russia contested for domination of Afghanistan. British destroyed Kabul’s famous covered Bazar in 1842 and Bala Hissar Fortress in 1880 and brought Afghanistan under their influence. Afghanistan achieved full independence from Britain in 1919 under Amanullah Khan, who proclaimed himself king in 1926. Modern reforms were instituted by Amanullah Khan and his successors Mohammed Nadir Shah (1929-1933) and Mohammed Zhir Shah (1933-1973). The monarchy fell to military coup in 1973 and Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan in 1979. After Soviet troupes retreated, a civil war began and finally Afghanistan came under Islamic militia (Taliban) rule in the last decade.

In 1982, UNESCO considered four locations in Afghanistan to be included in their list of World Heritage Sites: Bamiyan, Herat, Jam and Ai Khanum, but no action was taken. In April 1997 a local Taliban leader said he would blow up the Bamiyan Buddhas. Due to international outrage, Taliban leader Mullah Muhammed Omar stated that the Bamiyan Buddhas would not be destroyed. However, it is reported recently that Ai Khanum was razed to the ground by bulldozers. Recently, Mullah Muhammed Omar has issued a new fatwa for the destruction of Pre Islamic culture and new wave of destruction began last week, without any regard to the international outrage.

The cultural heritage that is being destroyed is not just Brahmin or Buddhist or Hindu heritage; it is the heritage of the whole world. It is a pity that in this modern age the whole world is reduced to an impotent witness of the destruction of our cultural legacy by a destitute and backward state. The whole world will be impoverished forever due to this mindless and fanatical destruction.

Taliban Destroy More Pre-Islamic Religious Artifacts – March 2001
Buddhist-Hindu complex also demolished in quest to rid Afghanistan of artifacts the Taliban consider false idols.
By Kathy Gannon
GHAZNI, Afghanistan, March 13 (AP) – At least two weeks before Afghanistan’s supreme ruler ordered all statues in the country destroyed, zealous Taliban soldiers wielding pickaxes hacked an ancient Buddhist-Hindu complex here to rubble, scrawling graffiti on the walls, a Taliban guard said.
“We confront the idols of non-Muslims and destroy them,” read one message etched in a wall in Pashtu, the language of Afghanistan’s majority Pashtun ethnic group.

Arriving packed aboard four pickup trucks, the soldiers spent several days swarming over the complex, built in tiers up the side of a hill from the second to seventh centuries, said Mullah Saeed Jan, a Taliban guard at the site.

An ancient baked clay statue of Buddha, beheaded decades ago, was hacked into small pieces, among the relics destroyed at the complex at Ghazni, 120 miles southwest of the Afghan capital, Kabul.

“The Buddha was here, but we have smashed it,” Jan said Tuesday, wrapped in a dirty brown blanket to protect against the cold wind sweeping the arid plains.

Jan said he knew little of the international outrage over the Taliban’s destruction of its pre-Islamic heritage, including two towering statues of Buddha in central Afghanistan.

“I don’t know what the world thinks, but it is in Shariat (Islamic law), so what can we do?” he said.

The destruction at the Ghazni complex came at least two weeks before the Taliban’s reclusive leader, Mullah Mohammed Omar, issued his order to destroy all statues, decreeing them idolatrous and offensive to Islam.

Taliban soldiers using explosives have demolished two towering statues of Buddha hewn from a cliff face in central Bamiyan in the third and fifth centuries. The taller of the two, at 170 feet, was believed to be the world’s tallest standing Buddha, while the other measured 120 feet.

The Taliban have refused to allow anyone to go to Bamiyan.

On Tuesday, Jan displayed bits of clay that used to be part of a Buddha statue kept inside a chamber sealed with wooden slats. In another chamber, all that had remained of one ancient statue, the feet, were pounded into rubble and even the altar was demolished.

“I don’t know. They have gone completely mad, I think,” said Nancy Dupree, a historian and Afghan expert, who has chronicled the history, culture and traditions of Afghanistan.

A founding member of the Society for the Preservation of Afghanistan’s Cultural Heritage, Dupree said the Ghazni ruins were a rich mix of Buddhist and Hindu traditions.

“This was toward the end of Buddhism in the area and the coming of Hinduism into Afghanistan,” she explained. Some of the chambers contained Hindu statues, long since lost, destroyed or sold.

Smack in the middle of the ancient trade route between China and central Asia, Afghanistan’s history is a rich blend of cultures and religions.

“There’s an unbroken cultural history of 50,000 years,” said Carla Grissmann, who spent several years inventorying the thousands of artifacts, most of Buddhist in origin, at the Kabul Museum.

The Taliban’s Foreign Minster Wakil Ahmed Muttawakil said Sunday they had all been destroyed.

For Afghans, Ghazni is considered an Islamic cultural mecca because religious leaders are buried there, Jan said.

Some of those leaders shared the same version of Islam that is followed by today’s Taliban.

Take Afghanistan’s 12th-century ruler, Sultan Mahmood Ghaznavi, who rampaged across most of northern India converting Hindus to Islam and smashing Hindu statues.
He is said to have taken Hindu statues and put them at the entrance to a mosque in Ghazni so the Muslim faithful could use them as stepping stones.

Afghanistan still has relatively large Hindu and Sikh populations, although hundreds fled between 1992 and 1996 when warring Islamic factions, who threw out the communists, destroyed much of Kabul.

The Taliban took control in 1996 and have allowed Hindus and Sikhs to practice their religions. A Sikh temple in Karte Parwan neighborhood is a giant marble hall where the soft melodies of Indian music can be heard.

Despite the Taliban’s ban on music, they have not interfered with music played by other religions.

“At the moment, we have no difficulties. But no one can guarantee the future,” said a Hindu resident of Kabul, who identified himself only as Makan.

“We don’t want to talk politics,” said a nervous Andar Singh, a Sikh. “Everything for the moment is calm and normal.” An estimated 450 worshippers come daily to a Sikh temple in Kabul, while in Jalalabad, there are 520 Sikh worshippers, Singh said.

Dupree clings to the hope that some of the statues may have been brought to Pakistan to be sold, despite the Taliban’s repeated denials that any artifact was sold.

“It is as wrong to sell as it is to have” the statues, said Mullah Mohammed Hassan, deputy administrator of Kabul.